tainability is now clearly oriented on the qualitative side, aiming for a new role of universities, while, for the latter, universities will have to grow, some-times almost from scratch, in order to become major assets of their country and secure for them a healthy and prosperous future.
Secondly, the “durability”. Sustainability involves something more that durability, although we deal in universities with “durable” time frames; it also implies that we can afford whatever endeavour we are involved into, thus it also involves accountability. This is precisely why should budgetary issues are a core subject of university sustainability.
But maybe the main question of this paper is not only how universities can prepare for the unpredictable and the unexpected, but to ask if this should be considered a core mission of universities. Any scholar, when asked this ques-tion, will probably immediately answer “Yes!” because this issue actually sends us back to some of our basic academic duties and challenges, and we can easily assume that all these principles are rather straightforward for a university scholar of the 21st century.
Still, we should not just live on principles, but should examine candidly if we are really taking all the necessary measures to fulfil this duty, and to live up to these challenges. Then the question is not so much to discuss these basic principles, but to examine how they are implemented in the academic com-munity, and what measures can be taken to apply them, as well as to make them well known in our society.
PREPARING THE UNIVERSITY FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE
In order to prepare for the unpredictable, the university needs to be itself a sus-tainable structure. It cannot afford to change its policies or priorities to answer short-term requirements of governments or economic stakeholders. Long-term sustainability is an absolute requirement if we want to be able to respond quickly to the unpredictable; it implies that universities are granted enough autonomy, both on academic and financial aspects.
The university as sustainable economic entity
This subject is analysed in more detail in other presentations at this sympo-sium, thus it will not be covered in detail here (Newby, Chapter 20).
One main issue resides in the balance between the various mechanisms of financing of universities (for both research and education), i.e. between pro-grammed, finalized financing on one hand, and basic, non-directed budgets on the other. At a time where financial accountability is a legitimate societal requirement, the plea for non-directed financing is not always popular with politicians; they will almost systematically prefer to invest massively in
“applied research” or “technological degrees”, where they see clear and
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the materials, structures or procedures to react to some major events, many of which are now environmental issues? Clearly universities can be key actors of this preparedness, and should provide some key components of this “prepared-ness toolbox”, which should contain tools used both in research and educa-tion. In this volume, Chuck Vest discusses in detail the complex relationship between uncertainty and risk (Chapter 6). However, Andy Stirling (2010) reminds us that concentrating exclusively on risks can bring dangerous bias:
“Overly narrow focus on risk is an inadequate response to incomplete knowl-edge. It leaves science advice vulnerable to the social dynamics of groups — and to manipulation by political pressures”. Indeed, this debate cannot be reduced to a mere technical issue: Tannert et al. (2007) also state that “when it comes to decisions that affect people’s lives and health […] carrying out research to diminish uncertainty and, consequentially, risks can become an ethical duty”.
Therefore, evaluating risks and being ready to respond to threats is not enough. We must not only be prepared for these unknown challenges of the future; a core role of universities is to generate directly the unexpected. Discov-eries and major breakthroughs are not always planned nor expected; being prepared for the unknown and the unknowable is an absolute condition for scientific progress. It is also a key asset for the personal accomplishment of our graduates, although this latter aspect is usually underestimated. Major discov-eries can indeed be considered as “black swans” (Taleb, 2010), as introduced by James Duderstadt in this symposium (Chapter 7). Universities should be a privileged provider of what we should here call “positive black swans”, i.e.
unexpected events that have a major impact, and can be the support for major breakthroughs and discoveries.
As it is usually seen in science, one basic question generates a series of oth-ers; some of them will be asked in this paper: What is sustainability in this con-text, how and why to prepare for the unexpected, and finally how do these questions impact on our basic academic missions, both as scholars and as teachers?
Although we all know that sustainability is one of the key issues of our times, the clear meaning of this concept for the evolution of the duties and objectives of modern universities is far from being straightforward, and many speakers during in this meeting have stressed this point. In French, sustain-ability is often translated as “développement durable”. French is probably a beau-tiful language, but this translation is indeed tricky!
Firstly, there are two ways of understanding this “development”: the first one is about growth and expansion, and the second one is more about matu-ration or evolution, but without necessarily a quantitative aspect. Speaking about growth in universities has of course a completely different meaning in the Western hemisphere and in developing countries. In the former, our
sus-diate economic outputs. Our duty is therefore to provide stakeholders and decision-makers with sufficient data and proof that investing in basic, non-finalized subjects is indeed yielding significant economic returns, if one is patient enough. It is precisely these long-term investments that can produce these unexpected, unplanned results that carry the highest potential of inno-vation and subsequent economic value.
The university as an academic institution Directed research: both a need and a danger
Universities were built on academic freedom as a central value. Researchers must be given the freedom and space to develop their ideas innovatively. But universities need to be well rooted in their societal environment, and thus any funding programme should ensure a well-balanced share between directed and non-directed research. This requires funding schemes to contain a significant part of bottom-up, investigator-led or non-directed research.
Use a long time frame for evaluating results
Many of the regulations and incentives (especially financial) to obtain forms of behaviour in universities are based on outcomes defined as desirable by authorities within a very short-term frame of reference, which is very often tuned with the duration of political mandates (Bolton & Lucas, 2008).
Adhering only to these short-term calendars will dangerously shift our priori-ties and reduce the output of unexpected, Black Swan type of scientific break-throughs. As Bernd Huber stated during one of our discussions: “Conservative universities can produce innovative solutions!”
Avoid restrictive research programming
In my own field of research, pharmacology, the standard drug discovery para-digm has shifted over the years more and more from serendipity toward a tar-get-based approach, although it is difficult to say which of these two pathways has finally yielded the most significant results (Schlueter & Peterson, 2009).
The advancements of science have now enabled us to identify precise molec-ular targets for many drugs. When such a target is validated (and this is in itself a complicated question), it can indeed lead to the discovery of original and successful new therapeutic agents; however, in many cases, it remains difficult to predict which targets will offer a real therapeutic benefit. In spite of the fan-tastic precision (and scientific interest) of the newly identified molecular tar-gets, new drug development is presently stagnating. Such a shift to “targeted research” is also a general tendency of our research granting agencies. This is not in itself a disputable strategy; but concentrating all our research efforts on single target drug development carries the risk of restricting therapeutic
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vation to well known pathways and strategies, and producing what is referred very often as a “me-too” discovery, rather than a major innovative therapeutic breakthrough. The unexpected or unknown will not be easily detected by such a research scheme.
Another strategy is sometimes referred to as “phenotypic”. In this strategy, one goes back to studying the effects of drug candidates not on simplified tar-gets, but on complex models, for example transgenic mice affected by a model disease. This global strategy is more prone to yield breakthrough advances, but it is costly and time-consuming. Ironically, it is sometimes difficult to find the pharmacologists and physiologists who can perform such global experiments because training and research programs have for many years extensively invested in molecular aspects of pharmacology, neglecting global physiology which was regarded as an old-fashioned domain. We now pay the price for this short-term planning.
Basic research as a central paradigm
When looking at the future, anticipation is one thing, vision quite another (Campbell, 2001). Basic science can yield unlimited and original thoughts about the future; and when scientists are (too rarely) given freedom to specu-late, the result is fascinating: they are capable of shedding new light on the unforeseeable by focusing on what might take us there: cutting-edge basic sci-ence that might lead to unexpected technologies, and adventurous technolo-gies that should lead to unpredictable, fundamental discoveries (Campbell, 2001). Of course governments, which provide directly or indirectly the vast majority of funds for universities, should have a word to say on research plan-ning and research strategies. But universities have to convince them that the most useful knowledge is that grounded in deep understanding, and that it should not be relinquished for shallower perceptions of utility (Boulton &
Lucas, 2008).
Leave some place for serendipity
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, serendipity is “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for”.
Serendipity is a term coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by “The Three Princes of Serendip”, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”. This surely rings a bell and would suggest that, if we want to be ready for the unknown and the unthinkable, we should devise research and education systems in which serendipity remains possible. However serendipity cannot, and should not, be considered as the magic wand, or the only efficient source of scientific breakthroughs.
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diate economic outputs. Our duty is therefore to provide stakeholders and decision-makers with sufficient data and proof that investing in basic, non-finalized subjects is indeed yielding significant economic returns, if one is patient enough. It is precisely these long-term investments that can produce these unexpected, unplanned results that carry the highest potential of inno-vation and subsequent economic value.
The university as an academic institution Directed research: both a need and a danger
Universities were built on academic freedom as a central value. Researchers must be given the freedom and space to develop their ideas innovatively. But universities need to be well rooted in their societal environment, and thus any funding programme should ensure a well-balanced share between directed and non-directed research. This requires funding schemes to contain a significant part of bottom-up, investigator-led or non-directed research.
Use a long time frame for evaluating results
Many of the regulations and incentives (especially financial) to obtain forms of behaviour in universities are based on outcomes defined as desirable by authorities within a very short-term frame of reference, which is very often tuned with the duration of political mandates (Bolton & Lucas, 2008).
Adhering only to these short-term calendars will dangerously shift our priori-ties and reduce the output of unexpected, Black Swan type of scientific break-throughs. As Bernd Huber stated during one of our discussions: “Conservative universities can produce innovative solutions!”
Avoid restrictive research programming
In my own field of research, pharmacology, the standard drug discovery para-digm has shifted over the years more and more from serendipity toward a tar-get-based approach, although it is difficult to say which of these two pathways has finally yielded the most significant results (Schlueter & Peterson, 2009).
The advancements of science have now enabled us to identify precise molec-ular targets for many drugs. When such a target is validated (and this is in itself a complicated question), it can indeed lead to the discovery of original and successful new therapeutic agents; however, in many cases, it remains difficult to predict which targets will offer a real therapeutic benefit. In spite of the fan-tastic precision (and scientific interest) of the newly identified molecular tar-gets, new drug development is presently stagnating. Such a shift to “targeted research” is also a general tendency of our research granting agencies. This is not in itself a disputable strategy; but concentrating all our research efforts on single target drug development carries the risk of restricting therapeutic
inno-Defend academic freedom
“Academic freedom is not only seen as a goal in itself. It is important espe-cially since it makes it possible for universities to serve the common good of society through searching for and disseminating knowledge and understand-ing, and through fostering independent thinking and expression in academic staff and students.” (Vrielink et al., 2010).
In this respect, academic freedom can be considered, not only as a “classi-cal” value of universities, which is of paramount political and ethical impor-tance, but also as a important tool to guarantee that we are given the means and leeway to stay prepared for the unpredictable. This is also an example that ethical values, not just technical schemes, are one of the major safeguards that are needed to guarantee that universities can remain prepared for the unpre-dictable and unthinkable.